Introductory Sociology Essay:
“I Need Something to Change Your Mind”
On Sunday, September 21, “more than 300,000 marchers flooded the streets of New York on Sunday in the largest climate change march in history.” (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/21/-sp-climate-change-protest-melbourne-london-new-york-protest?CMP=fb_gu) Hundreds of thousands of protestors joined in around the world at over 2646 events in 156 countries. Protests are growing as awareness increases. Many are aware that we have a problem.
However, at the same time, more Americans than ever (a jump from 16% to 23% in the last year — https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2540926/The-rise-climate-change-denier-New-figures-23-Americans-not-believe-global-warming-happening.html) believe that climate change is NOT an immediate threat, and our elected officials don’t always help (https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/18/3568720/john-holdren-science-house-climate-hearing/).
We have a multi-layered problem. Climate change is real, and it is moving faster than most predicted. Some say that human beings will be extinct within 20 years (https://www.vice.com/read/near-term-extinctionists-believe-the-world-is-going-to-end-very-soon). This is the physical problem. Yet this is also a social problem. If climate change is not interpreted as being a real and immediate threat, human beings, now clearly understood by essentially all serious scientists to be the cause of climate change, will not work for a solution.
How do you change someone’s mind?
Using the theories of Ethnomethodology and Symbolic Interactionism, craft a way to change the beliefs of climate change deniers, as well as change the behaviors of those who do not believe that climate change is a serious threat that requires immediate attention.
Spend at least one full page early in your essay summarizing the current threat that climate change poses, with several clear examples. (Use chapter 1 of Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, listed in your readings for this class for Tuesday, 12/9); you may also consider Rebecca Solnit’s piece “The Wheel Turns, the Boat Rocks, the Sea Rises: Change in a Time of Climate Change,” found here: https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175896/tomgram%3A_rebecca_solnit%2C_what_to_do_when_you%27re_running_out_of_time/#more)